The Pajama Game (Musical) Plot & Characters | StageAgent Overview Synopsis Romance is blossoming at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Handsome new Superintendent Sid Sorokin falls hard for feisty Union rep “Babe” Williams, and, despite her dismissal of all things love-related, it seems she’s falling right back. That is, until Sleep-Tite employees are refused a seven-and-a-half cent raise, and the pair find themselves on either side of the union protest that results. Based on Richard Bissel’s novel, 7 ½ cents, Adler and Ross’ Pajama Game portrays the ups and downs of romance, with the added heat of politics making the temperature extra hot. Babe and Sid must figure out how to love when the principles they value most are tearing them apart. First staged in 1954, The Pajama Game won three Tony awards, including best musical, and won another Tony for Best Revival in 2006, a testament to the fact that love, music, and politics are as hot as they ever were.

The Pajama Game features hit songs including “Hey There,” “Hernando’s Hideaway” and “Steam Heat” which have also become pop standards that climbed as high as number one in the US charts. Characters Chicago Theater Review: PAJAMA GAME (The Music Theatre Company in Highland Park) Chicago Theater Review: PAJAMA GAME (The Music Theatre Company in Highland Park) by Lawrence Bommer on April 25, 2013 in Theater-Chicago WHEN UNIONS RULED THE EARTH Outrageously overdue for revival (the last one was at Marriott Theatre in 2004), this irresistible 1954 Broadway classic harks back to a time when producers could actually pin a plot on a threatened strike by union workers in the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Solidarity, alas, isn’t forever.) Today, just 59 years later, you’d be hard-pressed to find its equivalent.

Complete with a second act padded with novelty numbers (including the Bob Fosse signature dances “Hernando’s Hideaway” and “Steam Heat”), this instantly likable vintage musical by George Abbott, Richard Adler and Jerry Ross delights with the very salt-of-the-earth characters and solid situations that graced Damn Yankees, their next winner. Clever games in their own right, Adler and Ross’ melodies and lyrics fit each other like a charm. Happily, here they fit the 13-member ensemble just as tightly. Unlikely soulmates Babe, head of the grievance committee, and Sid, a freelance factory superintendent from Chicago, learn that love can reconcile even management and labor, with help from the delicious hit “Hey There,” as sumptuous a melody as was ever created on a Dictaphone. In Jess McLeod’s surefire staging for Highland Park’s Music Theatre Company, Sarah Blockel and David Sajewich never condescend to their characters and root the tale in grown-up, real-life passions.

Rollicking work comes from Nancy Kolton as the boss’ accommodating secretary, Tyler Ravelson as the hearty union chief, Donald Brearley as Babe’s matchmaking dad and as the short-sighted Sleep Tite mogul, and Jason Richards as a time-study efficiency expert whose busy stopwatch can’t control his flirtatious fiancée, an effervescent fireball played by Dana Tretta. With moxie instead of mikes, these correctly cast and richly coached performers earn every second on the stage. Among many bravura breakouts, Jessica Redish’s choreography kicks up a sweet storm in a small space in the raucous “Once-A-Year Day” picnic romp and “Seven and a Half-Cents,” an anthem to a raise. It’s amazing how on the basically bare stage of this former Highland Park field house, this less-is-more Equity ensemble can instantly recreate a factory floor full of busy sewing machines, all the clandestine whoopee of “Hernando’s Hideaway,” or Cedar Rapids’ Eagle Hall where the union throws a fundraiser in anticipation of a strike. Strike — it all seems like ancient history when collective bargaining made markets fair as well as prosperous.

Well, as the title says it was only a “game.” It’s played superbly in this wonderful North Shore playhouse. photos by Sarah JHP Watkins The Pajama Game The Music Theatre Company, 1850 Green Bay Road in Highland Park scheduled to end on May 19, 2013 for tickets, call 847.579.4900 or visit for info on this and other Chicago Theater, visit The Pajama Game - Music Theatre Company - Chicago Music Theatre Company 1850 Green Bay Road Highland Park The Pajama Game tells the story of Babe and Sid, struggling to fall in love as workers and management clash over seven and a half cents. The legendary score featuring "Hey There," Hernando's Hideaway," "Steam Heat," among others, is one of the most popular scores in the American Theatre canon. Stripped down to its essence to reveal the heart of its story, TMTC's production is a clever, truthful and poignant musical for our times.

Thru - May 19, 2013 Average Rating based on 7 reviews Highly Recommended Not Recommended Chicago Tribune - Recommended "...Better yet, the show is very well sung under the musical direction of Matt Deitchman: Sajewich, who would be really great if he took a few more risks, has an easy-on-the-ear croon, and Bockel sounds quite lovely throughout. There are also lively comic turns to enjoy from Kelley Abell as Poopsie, Tyler Ravelson as Prez (of the union, natch) and Donald Brearley, playing the intriguing double assignment of Hasler and Pop, the two oldsters who pull the strings." Chris Jones Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended "...Still, the Music Theatre Company's production is another showcase of Jessica Redish's flawless Fosse choreography (especially during the deliciously divey "Hernando's Hideaway") and a cast of top-notch talent. Jason Richards and Dana Tretta provide comic relief as Vernon Hines, the "time study man" who keeps Sleep Tite Pajama Factory on schedule, and Gladys, the witty object of his affection.

And of his jealous nature-some passionate knife throwing certainly livens things up in the second act." Marissa Oberlander Stage and Cinema - Highly Recommended "...Outrageously overdue for revival (the last one was at Marriott Theatre in 2004), this irresistible 1954 Broadway classic harks back to a time when producers could actually pin a plot on a threatened strike by union workers in the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Solidarity, alas, isn't forever.) Today, just 59 years later, you'd be hard-pressed to find its equivalent." Lawrence Bommer ChicagoCritic - Recommended "...The sixteen songs contain several harmoniously silly songs culminating with the "Seven and One Half Cents" anthem to the workingman. The Pajama Game is a cute show that represents all that is astounding in the vintage American musical. The Pajama Game is charming, tuneful throw back musical that remind us that understandable lyrics and hummable melodies need be present in order to achieve audience approval.

This is a cute, entertaining production of The Pajama Game." Tom Williams Around The Town Chicago - Recommended "...This is a finely tuned cast as directed by Jess McLeod with strong dance and voice in a trimmed down version of the original. Gone is some of the glitz, allowing this production to get into the meat of the meaning of the story as well as allowing us to take in the lyrics of the songs. In particular, in ï¿½7 1/2 centsï¿½ in the second act, the union people vent just how their lives will be changed by that tiny little raise.

Yes, ï¿½7 1/2 cents, doesnï¿½t mean a thing, but give it to me forty hours every week, and that is enough to be living like a kingï¿½ when they go over all the luxury items that this paltry sum will buy them, you see many audience members smile larger than life, but those were realistic back in the days of ï¿½The Pajama gameï¿½." Alan Bresloff Chicago Theatre Review - Recommended "...For a stroll down a memory lane of musical hits, a charming love story demonstrating how opposites attract and a reminder of the importance of American unions to the economy, the Music Theatre Company's entertaining Spring offering is no sleeper." Broadway Babies Say Goodnight Broadway Babies Say Goodnight Read the Review The Op'nin' `To me, there's nothing like the overture ending and the curtain going up,' says Arthur Laurents, librettist of Gypsy and West Side Story. `I think that's the most exciting moment in the theatre. And I wish we still had curtains.' Here's the opening of The Pajama Game (1954): `This is a very serious drama. It's kind of a problem play.

It's about Capital and Labour. I wouldn't bother to make such a point of all this except later on if you happen to see a lot of naked women being chased through the woods, I don't want you to get the wrong impression. This play is full of symbolism.' Wham! And cue title song. In a few lines, George Abbott has distilled the show's spirit: this is a musical comedy about a strike at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. If you don't care for it, fine, leave now; but at least, 40 minutes into Act One, you can't complain you've been misled. What's wrong with most musicals can usually be traced to something in the first ten minutes. This can also be true of plays: with a comedy, the most important decision you make is when and what your first laugh is. But with a musical there are other considerations: in the first ten minutes, you have to communicate the tone of the piece, its atmosphere, its concerns, the musical style, and the staging vocabulary  are we in for dream ballets or buck'n'wings or naturalistic movement?

Every truly great show has a great op'nin': Kiss Me, Kate (1948) has `Another Op'nin', Another Show'  and immediately we're backstage. Porgy and Bess (1935) has that languorous lullaby `Summertime'  not much to do with storyline or dramatis personae, but immediately it transports us to Catfish Row in Charleston. By the time the chorus joins in the harmony, the song has infused the community with a spiritual dimension and become its anthem. Because this is a `folk opera', Catfish Row is in its way a character in the drama, perhaps the most important character, and the authors use this song as the community's leitmotif. Guys and Dolls (1950) has the trio of horse-gamblers arguing about the best bet of the day: `I got the horse right here!'  or, to give the song its proper title, `Fugue For Tinhorns'.

Here's a truly inspired piece of musicalization: three guys with a different opinion on the same subject, noisily insistent that each one knows which horse to bet; and what better way to express this in song than in a sort of Broadway fugue? It underlines Damon Runyon's heightened, stylized vernacular with a musical formality -- entirely appropriate because, despite the breezy brashness, despite the Broadway low life, the world we're about to enter has as elaborate a protocol as any European court. My Fair Lady (1956) has a longish (for a musical) dialogue scene, to let you know this show is about words and language, and then goes into `Why Can't The English Learn To Speak?'  and there's the theme of the drama in a nutshell. West Side Story (1957), conversely, begins with no words but a musical `Prologue' to accompany the Sharks and Jets dancing  or miming, or moving  their increasing hostility. At the end of this sequence, the Shark leader cuts the ear of a Jet, and a police whistle is heard.

This sets the scene for the drama which follows, as well as the music: the composer establishes all the pitches and polarities which bind the West Side numbers together right from the very first chord, a major-minor triad. Obviously, you're not sitting eighth row centre figuring all that out, but by the end of the Prologue you know at least that what follows will be spiky, finger-snappy, urban  and tragic. Just as importantly, you also know that this story will be told as much through movement as anything else; the West Side opening indicates the score's symphonic and choreographic ambitions. Gypsy (1959) begins with Uncle Jocko's Kiddie Show in Seattle: the stage is filled with grotesque moppets in tacky, home-made costumes. Suddenly, from the back of the auditorium, a rasping voice shouts, `Sing out, Louise!' and barging her way down the aisle comes the ultimate stage mother, Mama Rose. This is an inspired opening: effectively, the principal character hijacks her own show and disrupts the opening number. If you object that it doesn seem very musical, relax: the score's already home and dry.

Most Broadway overtures are arbitrary medleys of choruses of the big songs cobbled together by the orchestrators. Jule Styne overtures aren't: he supervised them himself and he attached great importance to them. For Gypsy, when it came to the blaring strip-joint bump'n'grind E-flat shrieks, he instructed the second trumpet to blow the roof off. The audience applauded wildly. By the end of the overture, they were already on the show's side. Sweeney Todd (1979) establishes itself on the very first word of the very first line: Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd ... Attend. A less scrupulous dramatist would have written `This is ...' or `Here comes ...' The prosody fits, they get you into the meat of the number. But, by choosing this word, the author is already conjuring time and place  nineteenth-century London. This is a fine example of musical theatre's best qualities: compression, economy, making the most of every aspect of the production so that even this one tiny insignificant word is working in the service of the play. For what it's worth, it's a modal tune. So what?

Only one theatregoer in 100,000 sits up and goes, `Ah-ha! A modal tune!' But modal tunes are common in old English ballads, and chances are most of the other 99,999 recognize that what they're hearing sounds as if it's a dark legend, risen up out of a grimy, smoke-shrouded past. Within a few bars, Sweeney Todd is on its way. It's as different as you could imagine from The Pajama Game, but it operates to the same principles. It's a way of answering the most important question on any musical: `What is this show about?' It isn't just the audience who wants to know. Jerome Robbins, co-director of Pajama Game and superstager of West Side, always bugs his authors with this question because it's even more critical for them. A good musical is such a freak coalescence of different elements  book, lyrics, music, orchestrations, choreography, design  that, if the creative team doesn't have an agreed answer to that question, chances are they're unlikely to be able to persuade an audience.

The best answer Robbins ever received to his nagging poser comes in the opening number of Fiddler on the Roof (1964). What is this show about? Tradition! Fiddler is based on a handful of Sholom Aleichem stories about a dairyman in a Ukrainian shtetl, stories which appeared separately between 1895 and 1914. Aleichem's Tevye is not concerned with tradition. When he hears that his daughter has pledged herself to the penniless tailor's son, he's not bothered about the tradition of arranged marriages being broken, only that he's been left out of it. As a theme, tradition is the invention of the stage version, cooked up by librettist Joseph Stein, musicalized by composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and magnificently staged by Robbins to bind the short stories together into a coherent whole. It doesn't have a clever lyric; it goes: Tradition! Tradition! Tradition! It's set up explicitly in Tevye's opening speech, which is less a song cue than a formal announcement: We stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance?

That I can tell you in a word  tradition! And at the end of the number, in case you've still missed the point, Tevye puts a tag on it: Without our traditions, our life would be as shaky as ... (The original violin theme is recapitulated.) ... as a fiddler on the roof! This is what's at stake in the drama. Don't say you weren't warned. * * * Even if a musical gets its first ten minutes right, things can still go wrong. But, if it gets the opening wrong, it's highly unlikely to recover. The audience's expectations have been sent in the wrong direction and, as they begin to realize that those expectations won't be fulfilled, they'll be left feeling pretty short-changed. Two examples from similar shows: Crazy for You (1991) is the `new' Gershwin musical; High Society (1987) was a `new' Cole Porter musical. In both cases the adaptors had been given free range to roam through their respective composers' catalogues and choose what songs they needed.

Crazy for You opens backstage at the Zangler Theatre, New York, where Bobby, desperate to break into showbusiness, performs an impromptu audition for the great impresario Bella Zangler. This is not a `book number'  that's to say, the music is not an expression of character or plot point arising from the dialogue, the defining convention of musical theatre. Instead, more prosaically, it's a real number, a `prop number': Bobby is backstage and doing the song for Zangler. So it's sparely orchestrated -- little more than a rehearsal piano and some support; it's one chorus; and its tap-break ends with Bobby stamping on Zangler's foot. This is grim reality: Bobby is expelled from the theatre. Outside, he makes a decision, and sings `I Can't Be Bothered Now'  the second song, but the real opening number: the first `book number' in the show.

There is an automobile onstage (it's the 1930s) and, as Bobby opens the door, one showgirl, pretty in pink, steps out, then another, and another, and more and more, far more than could fit in any motor car; finally, Bobby raises the hood of the vehicle and the last chorine emerges. The audience leans back, reassured and content: Susan Stroman's fizzy, inventive choreography has told them that what's about to follow is romantic fantasy. More to the point, it's true to the character of the song, and the choice of song is true to Bobby's character and the engine of the drama: My bonds and shares I'm dancing and I Can't Be Bothered Now ... This lyric captures the philosophy of Ira Gershwin's entire oeuvre  which is important: the show is a celebration of Gershwin. But it's also an exact expression of Bobby's feelings and the reason why he heads to Dead Rock, Arkansas. So the number does everything it should: it defines the principal's motivation; it kick-starts the plot; and it communicates the spirit of the score and the staging.

Audiences don't reason it out like that; we just eat it up. But that's why. High Society, a West End adaptation of Philip Barry's Philadelphia Story (1939), was an almost identical project. Where Crazy for You was derived from the Gershwins' Girl Crazy (1930) but drew on other songs as needed, High Society started with Cole Porter's score for the 1956 film and augmented it as necessary. The plot concerns the arrival of a journalist and photographer from Spy magazine to cover a society wedding, and the complications that ensue. Librettist/director Richard Eyre decided that, although the rest of the show takes place in Philadelphia, he would open with a prologue set in the Spy editorial offices, back in New York, as the reporters are given their assignment. Sounds fair enough.

So Eyre trawled the Porter catalogue for a song that was apropos and came across `How Do You Spell Ambassador?', originally written for a chorus of stupid, lazy reporters: `How do you spell "Moscow", men?' `Too tough, by far ...' `How do you spell "administration", then?' `Just put FDR.' You can see Eyre's reasoning: he opens the show with a scene set in a newspaper office; here is a song set in a newspaper office. But what's the song about? It's about how thick and careless hacks are. This isn't the theme of High Society, so, on those grounds alone, it would be irrelevant. But, actually, it's worse than irrelevant: the journalist and photographer (Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm in the 1956 film) are the most sympathetic characters in the piece  the one a noble but frustrated would-be novelist, the other a wisecracking but vulnerable lady snapper; they're our point of view on the caperings of society folk. By giving them this song as the first expression of their character Eyre is destabilizing the axis of the drama. So this song is actively misleading about all that follows.

And, apart from anything else, whatever the superficial aptness of its lyric content, it's musically undistinguished. As a result, audiences at the Victoria Palace sat restless and confused through the first half of Act One. Eyre is no fool. He's the director of the Royal National Theatre, and few men have as sharp an understanding of non-musical drama. But, in this instance, he'd approached the show with a plodding literalism. He didn't understand that, in a musical, the first number has to be more than just the number which comes first. Some weeks after the first night Eyre realized what was happening and decided to change the song. He reverted to the opening number as used in the film, `High Society Calypso'. But this was never anything more than just a bit of fluff for Louis Armstrong and his band, though they did it with great charm. Eyre didn't have Satch, nor could he use the lyric: Just dig that scenery floatin' by We're now approachin' Newport, Rhode I. The movie was set in Newport, Rhode Island; Eyre's version restored the original setting, Philadelphia. So that couplet had to go.

Then: I wanna play for my former pal He runs the local jazz festival. In the movie, he did run the Newport festival; but not in Eyre's version. So goodbye, verse two. Unable to fit Porter's lyric, Eyre was obliged to call in Richard Stilgoe to rewrite the song. So he winds up with a Cole Porter show which doesn't open with a Cole Porter song. This was less disruptively misleading than `How Do You Spell Ambassador?', but still unsatisfying. What should he have done? Well, the show limped along for threequarters of an hour or so until the two hacks, surveying the wedding presents, sing `Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?': at last, a songthat lands. Why not open with this? In the offices of Spy magazine, the reporters are contemplating their next assignment, which both of them despise. `Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' would have been not merely a correct expression of their own sentiments, but it's what the show's about, too: `the privileged classes enjoying their privileges' and the journalists' reaction to it. You could have coasted on the goodwill it engenders for a good 30 minutes.

Eyre, unlike the creators of Crazy for You, misunderstood the form. So Crazy for You plays on, while High Society is a forgotten flop. Those first ten minutes did for it. * * * Conventional Broadway wisdom says you should always write the first song last, because by then you know what the show's about  and, besides, the original curtain-raiser always gets junked and replaced. Annie's did, so did Guys and Dolls'. Almost alone among Broadway authors, Kander and Ebb make a point of doing the first song first. `The reasons you give for writing it last,' says Fred Ebb, `are exactly the reasons why we do it first  to define the show before you begin writing it. It's like a court of law: first you get up and say I'm going to prove to you this man is guilty, and then you proceed to do so. But you state your case up front.' So Kander and Ebb always do the opening number first  and that may be why, alone among the major Broadway writers of the past 30 years, they've never had a major disastrous humiliating floperoo.

Come smash hit or modest success, their shows open with numbers that set the tone, the atmosphere, the time and place brilliantly. Chicago (1975) had `All That Jazz', but even The Rink (1984) had `Coloured Lights', as Angel, Ugly-duckling flower-child, prepares to return home after seven years and recalls long-ago nights at the roller rink: Noisy boys long and lean Giggles of girls in the mezzanine ... A peach of an image, wistful and nostalgic, but a delusion. When she gets back, there are no coloured lights, no giggles or girls, only a derelict, rotting ruin. `With Cabaret, we were trying to find the piece, to write our way into it,' John Kander remembers. `The first thing we wrote was "Willkommen" and the very first thing that ever happened was that little vamp.' Kander is routinely hailed as the champ of the vamps, those little musical figures that, when they work, really kick-start a song  the `dum-dum-da-de-dum' at the front of `New York, New York' is his surefire killer.

`When you find something you like, it tells you about the direction you want to go in.' The Cabaret opener has embedded itself in our cultural vocabulary. For the film Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks wrote Madeline Kahn, who was playing a Teuton saloon chantoosie in the Destry/Dietrich manner, a dressing-room scene where she greeted every knock on the door with the trilingual spoken instruction, `Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome': he knew we'd get the joke. At first glance, it seems for Cabaret the most obvious and old-fashioned opening you could come up with: `Welcome to the show.' But Joel Grey is seducing us, slyly beckoning us into the club as a retreat from the troubles of the world  whereas what happens in the cabaret is, in fact, a comment and a mirror on what's going on in the wider world. It's a frequent complaint that the `concept' musical undervalues the score, but Kander and Ebb at least have managed to give the production concept a musical character too, just as their predecessors did for character and location. In Cabaret, the cabaret is the main character, and it's set up perfectly.

In Chicago, Bob Fosse staged a 1920s murder trial as a vaudeville, so Kander and Ebb's opener is an invitation to hit the town and enjoy `All That Jazz'  in both senses: the music and the vaudeville, but also all the flim-flam and huckstering and razzle-dazzle of the legal process. In Chicago, the `jazz' is the character. We have Rodgers and Hammerstein to thank for making these principles stick, in one blockbuster hit after another. If R&H seem conventional today, it's because they invented the conventions  especially the most important one: let the story dictate the tone. To those who scoff at the R&H format, there's a simple retort: what format? These boys start their first show  Oklahoma! (1943)  with a woman alone on-stage churning butter. In the distance, we hear a solo voice: Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' Oh, what a beautiful day ...

It seems as simple as a folk-song, but no anonymous, demotic farm-hand's singalong would have Curly sing `mor-nin" on D natural and then, in the equivalent spot two lines on, `fee-lin" on D sharp. You need a professional composer for that: they signal Curly's intensity of feeling about the land he belongs to. This is more than mere pastiche can ever achieve: Rodgers and Hammerstein have taken a folk form and imbued it with deep, rare passion. But for their next trick, Carousel (1945), there's no butter churner, no solo from the wings. Instead, they dump the overture and lay out all the exposition and the principal characters in a pantomime. A pantomime in waltz time, too. More than that, a pantomime in waltz time that manages to be utterly naturalistic. And then, and then ...

we're into dialogue and underscoring, effortlessly, unobtrusively matched  and matched to the mill machinery, too  and then the two girls' colloquial rhythmic chatter flowers into song  `You're A Queer One, Julie Jordan' and `When I Marry Mister Snow'  and then Billy Bigelow, the carnival barker, appears and he and Julie speculate on what might happen `If I Loved You'. This is an entire courtship in song: by the end of it, we know that Billy and Julie love each other, will always love each other, and that this love will bring great pain to them. Mozart may have better music, Shakespeare better words, but only in the American musical play do we see the constituent elements fusing to create a unified, indissoluble identity. There are no rules: you can start with dialogue or song or dance or all three, but it must be the appropriate conveyance for the themes of the play. We've known all this since the opening night which opened it all up: 27 December 1927.

Accustomed only to racy musical comedy or florid operetta, the first-night audience at the Ziegfeld gave an audible gasp as the curtain rose on the most startling of any Broadway chorus to date  sweating black stevedores loading cotton and singing: Niggers all work on the Mississippi Niggers all work while the white folks play ... From that first shocking word, confronting midtown Manhattan with aspects of their society they preferred not to think about, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II presented their audience with something new: drama in music, with neither element constrained by the other. It is the ultimate opening number, because it is the opening number for all that follows. (C) 1997 Mark Steyn All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-415-92286-0 Theater department wakes up their fall season with The Pajama Game — The Bowdoin Orient Eliza Graumlich CATCHING SOME Z’s: The cast of “The Pajama Game” brings energy to the stage alongside members of the jazz quartet (who can be seen in the background). Last night, the Department of Theater and Dance opened “The Pajama Game,” their first musical theater production in three years.

The musical, adapted from the novel “Seven and A Half Cents” by Richard Bissell, examines life inside the fictional Sleep Tite Pajama Factory. While the workers fight for fair pay, romance blooms between the factory’s superintendent and a the head of the grievance committee petitioning him for higher wages. “It’s about workers’ rights and fighting for a raise,” said Davis Robinson, the musical’s director and professor of theater at Bowdoin. Written in the 1950s when unions were particularly strong, the story was originally meant as, “an absurd farce about the problems of a labor strike… sort of a light comedy where everything works out in the end,” Robinson said. Musicals are an uncommon endeavor for Bowdoin’s theater department. Robinson said while he is “hesitant to plunge into musicals too often,” the form itself is very powerful because it allows music, dance, and theater to work in tandem. According to Robinson, musicals are a rarity because the theater department is careful to rotate through a variety of genres, and they tend not to go too long without a Shakespeare production or a work by a female playwright.

In collaboration with his Ensemble Devising class, Robinson has updated and re-envisioned the show for a modern audience. “It’s very corny humor in places and a very sugary treatment of very serious issues,” he said. “But the plot is strong enough that if you take away some of the sweet and make the stakes a little more realistic, [these serious issues come] into focus as…real and ongoing problem[s].” Though lines adhere strictly to the original script due to copyright laws, Robinson says this has not inhibited the reinterpretation of the show. As in the original production, the musical begins in 1950s Iowa, but then transitions to a factory in South Carolina. After intermission, the show moves overseas—first to 1990s China and then to Contemporary Bangladesh. As the locations shift, the actors playing the lead characters change as well. Costuming and video projections clarify and enhance these transitions. Robinson said they are “tracking the history of the garment industry as [they] do the show… spreading it out across time and geography.” The music has also been revamped in this weekend’s show.

Songs originally played in basic polka structure have been made Latin, and the production also includes styles of Motown and Bollywood music. The play’s musical director is Molly Ridley ’14. Though she brought no previous experience in theater production, she did have knowledge of jazz, which Robinson knew when he asked her to be “The Pajama Game’s” musical director last spring. Ridley said she helped “incorporate a jazz touch to almost all of the songs that are being played” and arranged the music for a jazz quartet setting. “Improvisation is a big theme in jazz so that takes place during a lot of the dance breaks,” she said. During the show, the jazz quartet—of which she takes part—plays while on stage with the actors. From there, the musicians can see the actors as they perform and improvise accordingly. While the tempo of some songs has been slowed down or sped up, other songs have been changed to a minor key; these modifications that help manipulate the mood of the production. Also heavily involved in the development of the show are Robinson’s Ensemble Devising students—half of them are members of the cast.

Jared Littlejohn ’15, who plays the Charlie, an electrician, is one of these students. He spends about two hours working on the musical in class on Mondays and Wednesdays and also attends rehearsals Monday through Thursday. In total, he estimates that he’s spent about 180 hours working on the production. This musical is particularly time consuming because it is a devised theater production—a method in which actors are heavily involved in the development of a show. This is another rarity in a theater production at Bowdoin. “Through devising, we’ve been able to think about creative ways to bring complexity to the entire production,” Littlejohn said. “I’ve been here fourteen years and I’ve never done a real major devised theater piece,” said Robinson. The Pajama Game Reviews - Theatre In Chicago - Play Reviews The Pajama Game Reviews Average Rating based on 7 reviews Highly Recommended Not Recommended Chicago Tribune- Recommended "...Better yet, the show is very well sung under the musical direction of Matt Deitchman: Sajewich, who would be really great if he took a few more risks, has an easy-on-the-ear croon, and Bockel sounds quite lovely throughout.

There are also lively comic turns to enjoy from Kelley Abell as Poopsie, Tyler Ravelson as Prez (of the union, natch) and Donald Brearley, playing the intriguing double assignment of Hasler and Pop, the two oldsters who pull the strings." Chris Jones Chicago Reader- Somewhat Recommended "...Still, the Music Theatre Company's production is another showcase of Jessica Redish's flawless Fosse choreography (especially during the deliciously divey "Hernando's Hideaway") and a cast of top-notch talent. Jason Richards and Dana Tretta provide comic relief as Vernon Hines, the "time study man" who keeps Sleep Tite Pajama Factory on schedule, and Gladys, the witty object of his affection. And of his jealous nature-some passionate knife throwing certainly livens things up in the second act." Marissa Oberlander Stage and Cinema- Highly Recommended "...Outrageously overdue for revival (the last one was at Marriott Theatre in 2004), this irresistible 1954 Broadway classic harks back to a time when producers could actually pin a plot on a threatened strike by union workers in the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

(Solidarity, alas, isn't forever.) Today, just 59 years later, you'd be hard-pressed to find its equivalent." Lawrence Bommer ChicagoCritic- Recommended "...The sixteen songs contain several harmoniously silly songs culminating with the "Seven and One Half Cents" anthem to the workingman. The Pajama Game is a cute show that represents all that is astounding in the vintage American musical. The Pajama Game is charming, tuneful throw back musical that remind us that understandable lyrics and hummable melodies need be present in order to achieve audience approval. This is a cute, entertaining production of The Pajama Game." Tom Williams Around The Town Chicago- Recommended "...This is a finely tuned cast as directed by Jess McLeod with strong dance and voice in a trimmed down version of the original. Gone is some of the glitz, allowing this production to get into the meat of the meaning of the story as well as allowing us to take in the lyrics of the songs. In particular, in ï¿½7 1/2 centsï¿½ in the second act, the union people vent just how their lives will be changed by that tiny little raise.

Yes, ï¿½7 1/2 cents, doesnï¿½t mean a thing, but give it to me forty hours every week, and that is enough to be living like a kingï¿½ when they go over all the luxury items that this paltry sum will buy them, you see many audience members smile larger than life, but those were realistic back in the days of ï¿½The Pajama gameï¿½." Alan Bresloff Chicago Theatre Review- Recommended "...For a stroll down a memory lane of musical hits, a charming love story demonstrating how opposites attract and a reminder of the importance of American unions to the economy, the Music Theatre Company's entertaining Spring offering is no sleeper."

Question: The plot of which musical concerned a strike at the Sleep-Tite Factory in Iowa?
Answer: THE PYJAMA GAME